After more than four years that SYRIZA, along with its social-democrat, right-wing and far right allies are in power, the workers' movement is still in a state of frustration and disarray. Hopes that a “left” government or a government of “social salvation” would effortlessly lead us out of austerity were bitterly disproved, as expected. The massive NO of the working class and the poor and oppressed strata in the referendum of 2015 was cancelled in the most provocative way, once more showing that a vote is not enough to save us. On the other hand, through years of struggles and strikes, working people have accumulated significant political experience, which will prove valuable in a new round of struggles. There are signs of a certain recovery of the movement, as frustration and disappointment will be subsiding.

SYRIZA has rapidly and absolutely adopted a policy in favour of the interests of the rich, industrialists, ship-owners, multinational and local big business. They imposed the third Memorandum and the endless austerity of the post-Memorandum budgetary surveillance. They privatised ports, trains and airports, handing the public wealth over to entrepreneurs. They destroyed the workers' rights and generalised precarious labour, with the bosses getting more and more out of control. In 2019 only, we have counted tens of workers dying upon work, while at the same time the legal framework on the so-called working accidents is getting stricter. They haveimprisoned refugees in miserable concentration camps. They permanently allied with the “centre-left”, i.e. with the cadres of PASOK who have been responsible for the dirty administration of the past decades. They became best friends with big business and they took them to the Republic of Macedonia to share the loot. They successfully claimed the role of the legitimate representative of the bloodstained NATO in the Balkans and the East Mediterranean.

Just before the elections, following the good old way, SYRIZA proclaimed some elementary benefits and measures of rationalisation that they themselves postponed for so many years: a slight increase in the minimum wage, facilitation measures for the indebted, a deferment of further cuts in pensions and a partial reintroduction of the 13th pension, some salary returns to specific categories of employees, that will probably be extinguished, if the tax-free salary level decreases again. Let there be no doubt, though, that even these benefits, which are ridiculous in relation with the needs of the workers and the unemployed, could never be gained without all those years of struggle and if SYRIZA was not afraid of the rage they will face in the elections. We owe the government no favour. SYRIZA is not the lesser evil.

The European elections come at a time of crisis and political destabilisation across Europe. The effects of the global capitalist crisis on the European economy are far from over, and a possible commercial war with the USA of Trump is hanging over the heads of European capitalists. Rivalries among the bourgeois classes of different European countries contradict with their need to unite against the US, China, and Russia. The BREXIT process has given rise to a prolonged political crisis in Britain. Massive austerity measures have been applied, not exclusively in the South, and a massive offensive against the working classes is underway.

In this context, the traditional parties that used to share power in the European capitalist states since the Second World War, the Christian-democrats and the social-democrats, find it hard to govern today. The far right, in different variations, has grown stronger in most countries: France, Italy, Hungary, Austria, the Spanish State, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Greece. In Italy and Hungary, they already govern. In Eastern Europe, the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes of the so-called Eastern Bloc has left behind a chronic situation of social disaster and political confusion.

Τhe Prespes agreement between Greece and the Republic of Macedoniaimposes in the clearest manner the hegemony of the Greek state over the neighboring Macedonian state and constitutes an overwhelming diplomatic and political victory for the Greek bourgeois class. According to the agreement, the Republic of Macedonia was forced to change its constitutional name to Republic of North Macedonia, to refrain from any claim over the recognition and rights of the Macedonian ethnic minority in Greece, to rename its public buildings and infrastructure (national highway, Skopje airport) so as to not include names that areconsidered part of the Greek history (Alexander the Great etc.), to submit its school textbooks for revision to an equal parity committee with Greek officials and to secure the free right of investment to the Greek capital in the country. In return, Greece consents to the admission of Macedonia to the NATO and the EU, which both the US and European imperialism favoras a means to gain ground in their rivalry with Russia.

NO TO THE IMPERIALIST THREAT AGAINST VENEZUELA. NO TO THE TRUMP-GUAIDÓ ATTEMPT OF COUP. IN DEFENSE OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE BOLIVARIAN NATION AND PEOPLE.

In one more of his war-media machinations at the service of the great U.S. capital, Donald Trump valleys the new political balance of forces in Latin America - where the pendulum has turned to the right - to take his most enthusiastic puppets, Duque, of Colombia, and Bolsonaro, of Brazil, to lead a political offensive, military blackmail, for toppling the Venezuelan government. The objectives could not be more evident: to retake for the big oil companies of the United States and the West the control of the largest oil and gas reserves of the planet, today in the sovereign hands of the Venezuelan state, thus closing, with violence, the chavista cycle in the country where the call for 21st century socialism came from.

The “end” of the memorandums and the continuation of the policies linked with them marks this year’s celebrations for the Polytechnic revolt. The SYRIZA-ANEL government begins its electoral campaign with false promises to the workers, but at the same time makes true promises of stability and profit to the bosses. New Democracy in a crescendo of nationalism and neoliberal promises goes after the government in the upcoming elections, trying to win back the support of the bourgeoisie, with privatizations, cutting down working rights and by imposing the dogma of “law and order”. This is a year of continuous elections. The working movement must come to the forefront and must not wait for the implementation of the pro-electoral promises. It must leave behind the awkwardness the SYRIZA government brought, reorganize and fight back. We already have the first encouraging signs. The students demos against the new government law for schools, the angry demos for the racist murder of Jackque Kostopoulos, the return of the general students assemblies and occupations in universities, and the insisting workers strikes in spite of the shameless sabotage imposed by GSEE. It's time for the workers movement to strike back, realizing that inside parliament, both the government and the opposition are enemies, since they are fighting for the interests of the bourgeoisie.